Conventional server systems are limited in types of load balancing and may be susceptible to a single point of failure. For example, a convention server system may have one or more network interface cards (NICs) communicating via single network switch. If the single network switch should fail or if the connections to or from the single network switch should fail, then the entire server system may be unable to communicate with systems on the other side of the single network switch.
Furthermore, although conventional server systems may provide limited load balancing, such server systems are limited to layer-2 (L2) load balancing and are limited to a peer-to-peer pair (i.e., multiple flows between a peer-to-peer pair must be on the same path). Thus, the conventional server systems have only L2 load balancing on a per client granularity.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with one or more aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.